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Mike Huckabee Likes Romney. Really.

During the Republican primary debates, audience members booed a question from an active serviceman who was gay and shouted, “Let him die,” about a hypothetical gravely ill patient without insurance. Is this different from the party that you know and love? Very much. It’s one of the reasons that I did not think this was a good time to run. The atmosphere was so toxic that it would not be an atmosphere in which I would breathe well. There is almost a hyperorthodoxy that is gripping the party that you have to go out and prove that you can be tougher, meaner, more hard-line than anybody else on the stage. It may lead to effective campaigning if the goal is to be the most ideological puritan on the platform, but the ultimate goal is more of what I’d call a true Reagan model. Not the Reagan model that has been invoked — but Ronald Reagan who understood that governing is an art.

What about the influence of money in this campaign? Does the fact that a few billionaires can make unlimited contributions eliminate populist candidates like you? I think it’s sad. Politics has become unbelievably and unfortunately way too much about how much money is involved rather than what kind of ideas are involved. That’s another reason why I felt that it was going to be very tough for me to run.

Many of the things that you said about Mitt Romney in 2008 are probably going to be central to the Obama team’s playbook. You said, “People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them of the guy they work with rather than the guy who laid them off.” Do you stand by that assessment of Romney? First of all, I said that on the Jay Leno show. I never mentioned Mitt Romney’s name.

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Mike HuckabeeCredit
Robyn Twomey for The New York Times

You’re saying you weren’t talking about Mitt Romney? Oh, come on, governor. I will let everybody draw their own conclusions, but here’s what I’m saying: Four years ago, Mitt Romney was my opponent, and he was saying some brutal things about me, and he and I were both vying for the same position. But I’m looking ahead now, and my question is real simple: which person, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, would be a better president? It’s not hard for me to be enthusiastically supportive of Mitt Romney.

In your memoir of the 2008 election, you wrote about Romney’s changing views on abortion, gun control and gay rights: “And we thought nobody could fill John Kerry’s flip-flops.” Yet you can wholeheartedly endorse him? Oh, sure, because Mitt Romney far more closely represents what I find important than Obama ever will. I also think he has surrounded himself with good people and will get good advice.

When I heard you were starting a syndicated radio show in April that would go head to head with Rush Limbaugh, I wondered if you were going after him because he hadn’t been kind to your candidacy in ’08. He’s been very critical of me and very wrong. It’s one thing to have an opinion, but the opinion needs to be based on fact. Even a few months ago, he said that I had endorsed Mitt Romney, when in fact I had not. I did not endorse anyone in the primary. But all of that had nothing to do with my decision to do a radio show.

Could it possibly be true that you have never, ever tried alcohol in your life? That’s true, other than communion wine in Europe. But I’ve never, ever tasted beer.

You’ve never cracked open the hotel minibar and thought to yourself, Well, I’m out of town, what the heck? No. It’s really not a religious reason. When I was younger, someone said, “Here, try this,” and handed me beer, and I smelled it, and I thought, Gee, that smells horrible. And they said, “Well, you have to develop a taste for it.” When they said that, I said, “All of my senses tell me to reject it, but you’re telling me that I have to keep doing it over and over till I get to the point that I’m convincing myself that I enjoy it?” Now, have I ever been tempted to break into a Krispy Kreme doughnut store in the middle of the night? Oh, yeah. God help us if I had a minibar stocked with cheesecake and chicken-fried steak. Dangerous.

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

A version of this interview appears in print on July 8, 2012, on Page MM10 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Mike Huckabee Likes Romney. Really. Today's Paper|Subscribe